


To Live By Your Side

by WhoreBucky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU but still has canon elements, AU-Sci-fi/fantasy elements, Fic-asexuality spectrum, Half AU-super!steve regular!bucky, I took some liberties here, M/M, asexual is sort of normal?, but blink and you'll miss it, cursing, its not really a thing for them but they do talk about it a little, slight talk of torture, tw blood, vampire, yes Bucky’s is a vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 02:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12695103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoreBucky/pseuds/WhoreBucky
Summary: Bucky is a stupid vampire who owns a coffee shop in a Brooklyn also like a trillion years old. Steve comes back to life and stumbles into Bucky’s coffee shop. Bucky had been in the war with Steve and struggles with keeping all of the secrets he’s had to keep from Steve.





	To Live By Your Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vorador](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorador/gifts).



James Buchanan (don’t ever call him that -- it’s just Bucky) Barnes was the most normal person you could come across. He worked just about every day. He had his friends. He liked making people happy more than anything in the world. He couldn’t sing, but that never stopped him. He could dance ‘til the sun came up though and he did so frequently. He had air in his lungs and blood in his veins and he was normal. Yes. Absolutely normal.  

Other than the tiny fact that he wasn’t human.

He couldn’t always remember the exact year he was born. He could never remember his mother’s name or what her voice sounded like, but he could see her plain as day. He remembered a sister, Becca, and a laugh so sweet it would give you cavities. His very first paying job was working on the construction of Brooklyn Bridge. He was the youngest on the crew and one of only two others from the original crew to finish the job without injury.  

It was the thing he remembered the most because touched every inch of that bridge before anyone ever walked across it, before the circus guy ever drug those elephants over, before the rumor mill spread a panic that cost over a dozen people their lives, his name was even carved into its steel. It was one of the only reasons Bucky knew he wasn’t imagining it all. He checked on it quite frequently. He couldn’t get out of the city. Brooklyn was his home. Always had been. B-U-C-K-Y. You had to lean over the railing to look at it. He’d carved it upside down so he could always read it and even now, after all the weathering and discoloring, it was there and his and it wasn’t going away anytime soon.  

Suppose you want to know about the ‘not human’ part? Not that it was exciting in the least. Well, probably for you, yeah, but it wasn’t for him. He remembered every second of it. Couldn't remember his own mother's name but he could remember that.  

In the time where science fiction didn't really exist and movies weren’t a thing, the only entertainment you could get was talking to your neighbors or going to the bar. Which was what Bucky was doing that night. Going to the bar. He always had a slightly shifted view on the world. There was always something in the papers about the Irish trying to steal everything from the “proper whites”. Italian’s trying to steal from everyone and Negroes too dumb to do anything but beat the shit out of anyone with different skin than them. All of it was bullshit. Bucky had worked with every walk of life on that bridge. White to black and every color in between. There were whites with nasty temperaments and blacks with hearts of gold and there were some that were the complete opposite. People were _just_ people. That’s what that bridge taught him. Everyone just wanted to make their money and bring it home to feed their family. That’s what New York was about. That’s what the bridge was about. Bringing everyone together.  

Bucky guessed that’s what got him in there in the first place, that unique point of view. There was a small club on Liberty for the ‘undesirables’. The Bridge Cafe on Water Street was somewhere that no one was judged. Considering it wasn’t even two minutes from the front door to the docks, there were always strangers in and out, interacting for the night before disappearing again forever. Faces you didn’t know getting the same treatment as customers like Bucky that had been there almost half his entire life already. You were always welcome at The Bridge.

That’s why the tall, skinny, well dressed man didn’t turn any heads. Only time you made a scene was for someone’s birthday or when someone found a job; something that was actually worth celebrating. Even in a time like that, there had always been fakes (that’s where the term “queer as a three-dollar bill” came from). Bucky had been one of those fakes his entire life. He worked _hard_ , extremely long hours in a dangerous job where people died and were hurt at least once a week for the fourteen years he worked on the bridge so it wasn’t that farfetched that he didn’t want to bring a woman into his life when he would never see her or any child they might bring into the world, never mind the fact that it was never a woman he wanted to bring home to begin with. From fourteen years old, somehow he managed to always miss all the danger. There were things that happened so close to him that it shook him up for days. He had always gotten lucky that way. Steel beams would fall from a hundred feet and crash down just far enough that it didn’t hurt him at all. The people in front of or behind him would be hurt or killed even, but Bucky _always_ walked away from it unscathed. This night, he just wasn’t be able to get away.  

It was late, far later than Bucky usually stayed out, but the bridge was done and the celebrating had been going on for weeks. There was a man. Said he came off the docks from what Bucky had overheard, but his pants were pressed so well that Bucky wondered if he had invented a portable presser to be able to crease his pants like that. If he hadn't, he was obviously lying about where he came from. His features were sharp; cold grey eyes, round lips, cheekbones to die for and a jaw that looked like it could take a chunk out of the Brooklyn Bridge with ease. Bucky was already more than a little drunk and the man just kept looking over at him so the next time their eyes met, Bucky slammed back his tequila and drug his eyes from head to toe over them man and back up again, raising one eyebrow for half a second before turning around and ordering one more shot.  

Needless to say, within fifteen minutes of conversation, they were heading back towards Bucky’s place. The streets were quiet. Everyone having gone to bed, or for the sake of everyone else, had gone quiet for the night. That’s why Bucky did his best to scream when almost halfway there, the man had grabbed him a lot rougher than any sexual intention should allow and shoved him into a pitch-black alleyway. Bucky’s whimpers and screams only seemed to made the man even more angry. He grabbed him tighter, squeezing so hard that Bucky was sure his bones would break. He didn’t think anyone could be that fit even after fourteen years of growing up doing some of the roughest work around, Bucky was broad and strong and no one wanted to pick a fight with him, but this man was subduing him easily.  

“Please,” he begged against the hand, still trying to struggle. “I have a little more money. It’s yours, please, just let me go back to my family. I’ll never touch a man again I swear it! Please!” His words were muffled, but the scream he let out when the man bit down so hard on his neck that he could _feel_ his teeth breaking the skin and sinking down deep into him. It was terrifying and painful and more than a little confusing. His teeth burned like fire and he was sucking on him as if he was trying to get his skin off of his body like a vacuum. "Please," he begged again. When it didn't work, Bucky crashed his head back against the side of the man's head and when the hand didn't move from his face, he bit down as hard as he could to show the man what it felt like. What the man said next made what little blood Bucky had left in his body run cold.  

"I was going to kill you," he said as easy as relaying the time. "But now you're going to wish you were dead for the rest of your life."

Who would've thought Bucky would be able to watch the nineteenth century pass, explore the entirety of the twentieth, and be a tiny part of the twenty-first? That man was right. He surely did wish he was dead. With every single breath, he did. If you were to ask anyone these days about vampires, every single one of them would know what you were talking about, but at the time that it happened, he had no idea what was going on. He was just so fucking hungry. Nothing would settle him. Not until he sniffed his way into the butcher's place in Red Hook following the most glorious smell he could ever imagine and devoured an entire cow. A live cow. Every last scrap of it --save for the bone-- and sucked up all the blood off the floor and finally – finally – he was sated.

So, that's what he had done his whole life. Chased animals around and drained them of every drop so he would never have to hurt any humans. Now, he had a friend, one who knew about it. She worked for a blood bank and there would always be blood bags in his fridge. It seemed like he was going to live forever. He had been worried about being found out, but with the world turning out the way it did, he wouldn't be surprised if everyone already knew he was a vampire. Aliens had honest to God shattered New York, Gods, Iron Man, Captain America back from the dead for fucks sake. There were worse things to be than a vegetarian vampire.  

\---

Bucky seemed to be safe in his little coffee shop in Brooklyn. God, it had changed so much. Once the spot for the poorest and most downtrodden, it was now the complete opposite. You had to have a serious amount of money to live here. After all this time, Bucky owned an apartment building and paid it off decades ago, passing it down to 'his grandson' or 'his nephew' whenever he could to keep up appearances and stay in the same place without being found out. Every so often, he'd change his name and the year he was born and switch his looks up a bit.

He decided this time around that it was time to be Bucky again, for real. James Buchanan Barnes was born again. He acquired the coffee shop as the owner wanted to retire and he promised to keep it as a shop. Bucky liked coffee. Always had. So, this was good for him. He fit right in. His hair was long this time, to his shoulders, he kept at least a light stubble if not a full beard sometimes, but he refused to start wearing those dang glasses. If he was going to have to look hipster, he sure as hell wasn't going to act that way. There were enough actual hipsters around that he prided himself in only looking the part.

Bucky also prided himself in his work. That's why when the bell to the shop rang out before he was even open, he turned to tell them they still had half an hour before specials were guaranteed, but he would be more than happy to pour just a regular cup of joe. He couldn’t get it out thought. He stopped, mouth hanging wide open, staring right at the bluest eyes he thought he would never see again.  

 

_Bucky’s condition kept his body from processing the serum they were trying to give him. They kept shooting him up and shooting him up. There were needles and knives and guns sometimes, but Bucky wasn’t human. Things didn’t affect him that way so they thought they were winning and Bucky had to keep letting them think that or they’d just keep putting round after round into his skull._

_This went on for months. A year maybe? No, probably not that long. It was hard to tell when they’d cover your eyes and leave you alone for so long you’d start to think you were going crazy. But it couldn’t have been a year. Just couldn’t have._

_That particular day had been long. Might’ve even been more than one day strung together. He couldn’t tell. There had been so many different voices coming in and out. People coming to poke and prod him and there wasn’t anything Bucky could do about it. Once they realized he could break out of just about anything, they started_ really _buckling him down to that chair. There had to be about a hundred people in that day and then it went quiet. So goddamn quiet. His own breathing was startling him. He could hear himself blinking and he knew. God he knew. The calm before the storm._

_If Bucky had a dollar for every fucking time he was right, he’d be a rich man._

_There were bullets firing and explosions and god only knows what else. Things that sounded fake. Lots of those. Then Bucky heard Zola coming. He heard him muttering to himself and shuffling papers around and then he said that he was sorry he couldn’t complete the experiment and patted Bucky’s shoulder like they were old friends. Bucky didn’t know what he meant until much later. It was quiet again only for a moment more before he felt someone undoing his restraints._

_“Don’t panic. I’m one of the good guys. Name’s Steve. You’re Bucky, right? 107th?” he asked, removing the blindfold and looking down at him._

_Bucky had lived on the docks his whole life. He spent a while out sailing in the twenties and he’d seen some of Europe’s coasts before that and he would bet his entire life that he knew for sure Steve’s eyes were bluer than any ocean, lake, river, or sea in the entire world. They were goddamn beautiful is what._

_“Hiya, Stevie,” he groaned out, rubbing at his eyes. Strangely keeping them closed all the time kind of hurt. “Nice to meet you.” There was a loud boom much closer than either of them were comfortable with. “I hope you got a plan to get us out of here.”_

_Steve’s smile was sly as he shifted down to help Bucky undo his leg restraints. “I’m workin’ on it.”_

 

"Captain," he said gently, standing up a little straighter. It was early. Sun wasn't even up yet, but Steve Rogers looked like he had been up all night. "What can I do for you?"

"Do you have just regular black coffee?"

Bucky smiled, nodding as he started filling the machine. "You not a fan of lattes and frappuchinos?"

Steve was staring at him the way Bucky wanted to stare first, but this was just another customer. Just another man in his shop. Not a ghost. "No, I'm really not. And nothing seems to taste right around here. I just want a good coffee."

"I understand." And he did. Everything tasted like chemicals and additives and what didn't taste that way had been bred to make them so large and fast growing that they didn't care that it didn't have a taste anymore. "I've got an old Italian bean. It's probably the closest to what you were used to."

"You know what I was used to?" He asked Bucky with a raised eyebrow.

"My great-grandfather fought with you. Said it reminded him of Azzano. Figured it might do the same for you," he said, pouring the cup and setting it on the counter. "Barnes. He was your sniper. I'm named after him actually." Of course, now deciding to be James Barnes again has bit him in the ass.

Steve stared down at the coffee in his hands. He wasn't sure he wanted to be reminded of Azzano. All the people he lost. "Bucky? He made it? He had kids?” He sounded confused. Almost hurt, but to the untrained ear, no one would hear that. Steve cleared his throat and quickly shook his head. “That's good. Real good." His blue eyes found Bucky's finally. He had looked at him before but he hadn't _really_ looked at him yet. Bucky wanted to tell him to go, that he wouldn't find what he was looking for, but he would if he stared long enough.. "You have the exact same eyes. Exact same. I don’t... God, it's like looking at a ghost."

Bucky flushed, looking down at his shoes. "Yeah. People say that a lot. Pegs thought the same thing. 'Bout sent the poor lady into an episode." He heard Steve take a breath like he hadn't even considered Peggy a possibility. Agent Carter. God, she was a beautiful woman. Steve had been a lot closer to her than most. "I went to see her after my gramps died to tell her the news. He was pretty spry up until the end so it wasn't really expected." He just kept lying. He wished to hell he could tell him the truth, but that was the last thing Steve needed after being defrosted.

"How long... Is she? She's… She’s..."

 

_“She’s gorgeous. What the hell would she ever want with a punk like you?” Bucky teased, pushing Steve’s shoulder playfully. It was amazing how fast they’d grown together. It was like they’d been together since the beginning of time when it had really only been a couple months._

_“Shut up, jerk. I think she liked me even when I was small. Either that or she was just being real nice.” Steve’s cheeks were pink only for a moment. Serum. Damn asshole couldn’t even blush proper. And God wouldn’t that be a sight?_

_“Ha! Peggy? Nice? You gotta be outta your skull. She’s got the hots for you alright. So what the hell do I have to do with it?” Bucky asked him, leaning against the tree behind him with a cigarette dangling from his lips._

_Steve was looking at him like he was going to either cry or explode or just straight up run away before he finally spit it out. “You gotta teach me to dance.”_

_That drew a bubble of laughter from Bucky so sudden that the cigarette fell out of his mouth. Thankfully he hadn’t lit it yet or his pants would’ve caught fire from where it landed on the hem. “Oh, Stevie, didn’t no one ever teach you before? You got two left feet or somethin’?” he asked, sticking the cigarette back in his pack and curling it back into his sleeve. “Come on then. I’ll get you squared away so you can run off with Agent Carter and get married and have tons of super babies and at least one of them’s gotta be named after me ‘cause lets be honest here. I’m the one starting this whole thing.”_

_They walked off deep into the woods and Bucky hummed a tune slow and sweet, one he couldn’t remember the words too. Maybe his mother used to sing it to him. There, in the middle of the woods in freezing cold God-Only-Knows-Where-Europe, Bucky Barnes taught Steve Rogers to dance right out of his arms and into Peggy Carter’s heart._

_He was so gone for that man. So, so far gone._

 

Steve looked like he was struggling, like he had when he asked Bucky to teach him to dance, so instead of just waiting for him to spit it out, Bucky reached over carefully and patted his hand. "She's still around. I'll get her address for you. You just stay right there. I'll be right back." Bucky ran to the back where he still had an actual address book like no one had anymore. He flipped straight to the A's and the first entry was hers. She would always be Agent Carter to him. Peggy in private, but never on paper. He scribbled the address and her phone number down on a muffin liner and pushed through the doors back to where Steve was standing. "Here you..."

Except Steve wasn't standing there. He wasn't anywhere to be found. On the counter where Steve had been was a napkin and a ten dollar bill. The napkin had 'sorry' scribbled in Steve's sloppy scrawl. Bucky stared up at the door, wondering if that actually happened. Did Steve Rogers really just come into his shop?

The rest of the day went by in a blur. He served the coffees and scones and half fat, no soy crap that everyone enjoyed so damn much and then he went home, pouring himself a glass of wine and warming up a bag of blood. He stared at the black screen of a television he hardly ever turned on and finally, once he had eaten, he got up and went to his spare room where he kept what little he allowed himself. It would be weird to own too much of his own stuff. Too much to piece together for people to realize he was forever twenty-eight.

He spent the rest of his night going through his pictures and newspaper cutouts from the war. Things about the Howling Commandos. Things from the best and worst time of his life. Steve was always close by. His tiny ass had been blown up into this walking beefcake and if Barnes had never met Howard Stark, he would've never believed it was possible. But it was. And it was possible that Steve could survive a plane crash.

 

_Bucky didn’t like this. The plan was simple, but there was far too much that could go wrong in such a short amount of time that he couldn’t get comfortable with it. Everyone he talked to seemed to look at him differently that day. If he had known any better, he would’ve never gone up on that stupid mountain._

_It started off mostly okay. Then he ran out of bullets with a giant robot blaster guy gaining on him. Steve came and saved the day like always, alive but there was a giant hole in the train now, but then he saw those stupid blue lights on his arms light up and Bucky held tight to that shield and he didn’t have time to plant his feet before he felt himself being sucked out of the train. An entire human flew out of it, but that stupid fucking shield dropped right back where Bucky had just been standing._

_And Steve, god, he reached so far, but Bucky was an entire train car distance away. There was no amount of reaching he could’ve done to save Bucky at that point. He felt the handle giving and he knew it was only a few moments before he would be gone. A splat on the side of a mountain. But he gave Steve a small, reassuring smile and he let go before the handle could make that decision for him._

_It must’ve been just a blink before it fell off because he could see it coming towards him as he watched Steve get smaller and smaller, the wind whipping around him so hard that it hurt. He could hear Steve’s voice ringing in his hears louder than he could hear the train. And then when he hit the ground, the last thing he heard before he drifted out of consciousness was that man’s warning like a ghost coming back to haunt him again._

“You’re going to wish you were dead for the rest of your life.”

_And he did. As soon as his eyes shot open and he managed to stand and start climbing his way back up that stupid mountain, he did wish he was dead. He thought about jumping off the mountain again, but he knew better. If he didn’t die the first time, he wouldn’t die the second and he wasn’t about to climb the same mountain twice._

 

Bucky couldn't get through it all. He could barely get through the first couple articles from the war. Up to then, he was fine. He could go through before and after like it was nothing. It was just that damn war. It hurt everyone. Human or not. If you had a heart, it broke it. Period. There were things that happened in that time that he never wanted to think about. Things he hadn't thought about since they sent him home and he started life over the way he wanted to. Peaceful and fun free. He spent the rest of the night asleep. The whole experience was enough to shake him up more than he had been in a long time.  

The next day was right back to his normal life like nothing happened. He had gone to Darcy's to _finally_ beat her at Monopoly and to pick up another donation box. It was a good day. And while he didn't tell her exactly what was on his mind, she knew something was off. His mood stayed sort of tilted as he tried to keep those memories away.

Bucky didn't see Steve again for a long time. He figured it would be like that. In fact, he was sure he would never see Steve again other than newsfeeds and television. There wasn't any reason for Steve to come back. Bucky was a liar for one. Plus, he looked exactly like he did eighty years ago. There was no way Steve could want to see him again. Steve’s friends could easily find Peggy and other than that, he had no reason to see Bucky again ever. That didn’t keep Bucky’s heart from skipping every time the door opened and dropping back down harshly every time it wasn’t Steve.

It was a long time before he went about living his life normally. He still eyed the news to make sure Steve was alright. There was a late night interruption to explain what happened that evening. It was after a fiasco in DC, apparently Steve saved the day with some dude and chick that Bucky wasn’t familiar with. Then, he came right back to New York and his first stop was... Bucky’s shop? He was about to walk out and close the door behind him when he opened the door and Steve stepped through.

“You still have that address?” Steve asked hopefully.

“Captain,” he greeted with a small smile. “I sure do. Are you gonna stay this time so I can actually give it to you?”

Steve actually blushed at that. That point-five second blush that anyone else would’ve missed. His shoulders bunched up in a way that would’ve looked endearing if he was still ninety pounds but he wasn’t. He was huge and it just made Bucky remember too much. “Yes. I’ll stay. I was wondering if I could get your name since you know so much about me already. I don’t know much about you.”

“You know my name already,” Bucky smiled, reaching over the counter for the muffin liner he’d stashed there just in case Steve decided to come back. “It’s Bucky.” Yeah, Stevie. It’s me. He wanted to say that so desperately but he couldn’t. Steve was dealing with enough. “Named after him, you know? I don’t normally allow this but I’m sure it’s gotta be hard for you. I know I look just like he did. That’s why I grew the beard.” Hey look! Not a lie for once. He could finally say he didn’t lie every time he spoke to Steve. “So, you can call me James if you would find that to be easier on you.”

Steve held the muffin liner like it was the most fragile thing in the entire world. Like just the weight of his gaze was going to crumble it. “You know I can’t do that. He’d come right out of that ground and whoop us both if you ever said that name out loud again.”

It was his smile that brought the laugh from his lips more than anything. His dumb, crooked, you-know-I’m-right smile. The one Bucky loved more than anything in this world. “Don’t want to add zombie best friend whoopins to all the aliens and government conspiracies?”

Now it was Steve’s turn to laugh. It was the most beautiful thing Bucky had heard in his almost 200 years. “No. No, can’t say I do.”

Bucky just smiled. His heart hurt like he was being changed all over again. “What _do_ you want?” He asked as he curled his fingers through his hair to push it back out of his eyes. He’d taken the bun out already to walk him. It helped him look a little scarier and kept people from bugging him this late at night. “This life really what you dreamed of? We always learned in school that you knew what you were getting into when you went with Erskine. That it was all laid out for you but I got the truth from gramps. They didn’t tell you shit, made you dance around in tights for not even a penny, then you took it upon yourself to save all those people in Azzano. You were lucky to get out alive. You were lucky to survive. And when you put that plane down…” Bucky took a breath. He died that day when he got the news that Steve wasn’t coming back. He wished he could die right then and there. He didn’t want to go on without his Stevie. “They pulled you back out and threw you into this life and they expect you to keep fighting all the time while you’re seventy years out of your depth? It’s not right. You shouldn’t have to take care of everyone all the time. Is that what you want? You want to go out punching aliens every time the Bat Signal lights up?”

 

_“You’re not a fucking dancing monkey, Steve!” Bucky yelled at him, slamming his hand down on the table. The bar was empty. It was too late for anyone to still be drinking and too early for the bartender to be awake so him and Steve found it to be a good place to be alone. “You can’t go back out there! They’ll eat you alive that all you did was save one stupid battalion that shouldn’t have been there in the first place and then you went right back onto that stage, dancing around like some fairy instead of fighting like you want to! You want to be here and you want to fight so you have to fight for it before you can fight in it!”_

_Steve’s breathing was increasing, but any anger was lost in the fact that his face couldn’t get as red as it should. His cheeks couldn’t light up, there was no fire in his eyes. He was just a little ruffled. That probably pissed him off even more. “Who the hell are you to tell me what I gotta do?! I can’t tell them no again! I barely got away with it the first time, they aren’t going to let me call the shots around here, Barnes. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not actually a Captain!”_

_“No,” Bucky said, standing up and going behind the bar to pour himself a shot. “But I am actually a Sergeant and I’m_ telling _you to tell them to fuck off. You are the best chance we got at winning this war. No, you’re not an army, but you fight like one and you_ feel _like one and you make us all want to get through this. You’re not just a good soldier, Steve. You’re a good person and in a place like this, we need you. I need you. I don’t want you to go. Just plead your case, I’m going to vouch for you whether you like it or not. So will everyone else. No one else in the world could’ve got us out of there, Steve. No one. Not the entire US Military could’ve done that. But you did and you’ll keep getting us out of there. You know that?”_

_Steve looked up at him, picking at the table absentmindedly. “What if I don’t want to? What if I really do want to go back to the stage? What if I don’t care if they eat me alive? I got a chance to go home. What if I take it?”_

_“No one is forcing you to stay here and if that’s why you want to go home, I won’t do anything in the world to stop you, Steve. I promise I won’t. If all you want is to go home and live your life, that’s fine. You go. But if you’re just scared of failing or if you think that there’s no way you can do that -- that you can save people and make a difference -- a second time, you better just stick it out, because I’m here to tell you that I can smell the stubborn on you and there’s nothing in this world that’s going to keep you from succeeding. It might have before you got all those stupid muscles and that lovely tan, but you’re going to beat HYDRA. You’re going to bring the Red Skull down and beat the shit out of him because you’re Brooklyn and you don’t quit. Not even when you’re scared. All those people you told me about beating up on you and how you just kept getting back up and punching on them some more? Does that sound like a guy that wants to go home when he can really make a difference?”_

_Looking back. Bucky thinks maybe it was all his fault Steve was even in this position._

 

Steve was staring at him like he was growing a new head or reading the Bible backwards or something. It made him wish he’d never said anything. Steve would probably run again and this time he would stay gone. “You’re just as intrusive as your great-grandfather. Family trait, huh?” He rubbed at his arm nervously. Something he had done as long as Bucky knew him. “Am I keeping you?” He asked her. “Do you have something to do?”

“I do actually.” He watched Steve’s face fall for a split second before he put his mask back on. “I have to have Captain America over for dinner,” he told him with a soft smile. He shut the lights off, set the alarms and locked the door behind them, tugging down the metal screen and padlocking it into place. “You sure do know how to wear a bruise,” he told Steve with a chuckle as he pointed to Steve’s mostly black and blue face. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital or something?” He asked as they started towards Bucky’s building.

“I’m too good for things like that,” Steve explained with a chuckle. “I’m fine. Just looks bad. Serum helps. It’ll be gone in a day or two.”

“Lucky. I stub my toe and I can feel it for a month,” Bucky lied, shoving his hands in his pockets. “So you can’t die?” He asked, waiting for the stupid orange hand to turn into a white stick figure so they could cross the street. They might not arrest Captain America for jaywalking but they’d sure as hell arrest Bucky.

“I don’t think so. I think all the bullets I’ve taken and a lifetime encased in ice means I’ll be around until the end unless I get decapitated or something equally destructive.” He looked over at Bucky as he said that and he could tell that thought worried him.

Bucky wanted to tell him that it would be okay. That living forever wasn’t that bad. Bucky had seen so much in his life. Technology had skyrocketed in his lifetime. The rights of every human getting so much better. They weren’t perfect by any means but it was on the path. There was more that made Bucky thankful of that asshole that bit him than things that made him regret that he couldn’t die. “Compared to how frail and sick you were before, is it harder knowing nothing will kill you or thinking you could die at any second?”

Steve was quiet all the way to the building. He didn’t answer until they were inside his apartment. “Your great-grandfather asked me something like that when we were in the war and I didn’t have an answer for him and I still don’t think I can answer it.”

Bucky shrugged, putting his keys in the basket beside the door and locking the door behind him. “That’s alright. You’ve got a lifetime to figure it out.”

Steve was looking past him, looking over his shoulder towards his mantle and it confused Bucky for just half a second before he realized what he was looking at. A framed picture. One Steve had given him when Bucky had told him how much he enjoyed it.

“It’s the original,” Bucky told him moving to the side so Steve could get through to the picture. “I think it’s about time it found it’s way back to you.”

“No. There’s no way. That can’t be the original,” Steve said immediately. “It can’t.”

Bucky moved to the mantle and took the picture out of the frame. He flipped it over to the back to show Steve. ‘Always yours, SGR’.

Steve stared at it for a long time, his hands shaking as he searched the paper for answers he wouldn’t get from it. “I can’t believe he kept this. I can’t believe he’s gone. I thought he would live forever. I thought…”

Bucky went to sit on the couch. This was Steve. His Stevie. They had been through so much together. Almost everything they could go through that didn’t involve Steve knowing Bucky’s secret. But he couldn’t drag Steve into that. Not then and not now. He could only enjoy his last time in Brooklyn because as long as Steve was spending forever here, Bucky couldn’t. The world was dumb but Steve was smart.

“I still feel like this. Like a dancing monkey. Like the only thing they care about is putting me up for show when there’s nothing to save the world from. I’m gonna live forever, Bucky. I know I am. That’s my curse but I don’t want my life to be like this. TV shows and PSA’s and specials on why you shouldn’t get detention. I wanted to fight in the war and stop Hitler and I did that and I just ripped HYDRA a new one and now I just want to be normal. I’ve never got to just be normal,” Steve said, sighing as he placed the picture back in the frame and put it back in its place.

“So quit. They’ve got more than enough heroes to save the world. It’s not your responsibility to shoulder it all. Let someone else be Captain America for once. Why does it have to be you in that stupid suit?” Bucky asked, getting up to get them both a beer. As soon as he opened the fridge he knew it was a bad idea. He had forgotten about the super sniffer Steve had now. He always knew when Bucky was smoking even if he washed and brushed and changed his clothes and rinsed with moonshine. There was no way he missed all that blood.

Steve was standing there, confusion clear on his face and a tiny bit of fear. “Bucky?” He asked so gently that he might not have even said it at all. “Why do you have blood in your fridge?”

That was it. The jig was up. There wasn’t anything he could do but tell the truth. He made Steve promise he wouldn’t leave until he had explained everything. And he didn’t. He never said a word. Bucky told him the whole story about how he turned and how he lived his life and how he didn’t harm humans. He told him that there never was a grandfather. How he never dated or slept with anyone. How he never had kids or a family at all or even really any friends at all. How he was basically a monster in title only. He told Steve about Darcy. About how Peggy knew the truth and how he didn’t tell her about Steve coming back because it was on Steve to do that if he wanted to. He told him everything. Start to finish and everything in between.

“You’re wrong,” Steve said finally, staring up at Bucky. “You’ve hurt humans. I saw you. I thought I was dreaming or hallucinating but now I know it was true. You did hurt someone.”

 

_Bucky was hungry. He thought being out in the woods he would find himself something to eat. Anything at all. A fucking rat for all he cared. All he wanted was fucking blood. He walked and walked and walked around running through every scenario in his head. He could run away. Keep running until he died of hunger. If he couldn’t find something, he wouldn’t be able to go back to Steve. Not with the way he smelled. His blood smelled more delicious than any human on the face of this earth. It smelled like everything Bucky had ever loved. It smelled like home as cliche as that sounded. Steve was his weakness and Bucky wouldn’t hurt him. Not ever._

_Just when he thought he couldn’t ever go back, he stumbled upon a man wearing the wrong color with a fucking swastika on his arm. He had his gun. He absolutely could’ve just shot him, but he didn’t. He hadn’t heard even a bird for miles and he was hungry. More hungry than he’d been when he first turned even._

_So Bucky snuck up behind him as quiet as he had always been. The only person quieter than him was Steve. He grabbed the man tight and bit down on his shoulder and drained him of every last drop. He drank until he could taste the death in the blood and even then he kept drinking._

_He felt bigger and stronger than he ever had and he stood there for the longest time just staring at the human he had killed with his this mouth and it made him sick. It made him want to die all over again._

 

“That was different. I was going to kill him regardless of how. He was the only one. I promise, Stevie. On Peggy’s life, I swear he was the only one. I hate myself for doing that but if I hadn’t, I don’t know what would’ve happened. There weren’t any animals around. I was getting delirious with hunger. I just couldn’t not do it or I would’ve had to leave you guys and I couldn’t do that either,” Bucky explained.

“You told me you loved me before you left that night,” Steve said, chewing on his lips and rubbing his arm in that stupid nervous tick kind of way again.

 

_They had spent so much time together. They were both kind of the outcasts. Everyone wanted to be friendly to them but no one really wanted to be friends with them. They didn’t really drink and they weren’t the rowdy kind so they didn’t even really spend that much time with the Howlies even though they got on with them extremely well. Steve was just Bucky’s best friend. That was all. He just fit so close that he couldn’t even stand it._

_“Steve? Stevie, are you up?” Bucky asked as he made his way into Steve’s tent. He wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t quite awake either. He made a grunting sound and opened an eye to look at him. “Gotta talk to you. It’s important.” Bucky didn’t want to get too close on account of how fucking tasty Steve smelled. Like a steak and a chocolate cake at the same time. He knelt down by Steve’s cot, watching as Steve’s eyes fluttered open with concern. He started to sit up, but Bucky just smiled reassuringly at him and pushed his fingers through Steve’s blonde locks. “You don’t have to worry. No one’s hurt and we’re not in any danger. Just gotta talk to you.”_

_“Jesus, Buck. Don’t scare me like that,” Steve sighed, slumping back down onto his cot. “Feels nice.” He pushed his head up into Bucky’s hand like a damn cat and that made his neck stretch out and he could practically see the blood running through his pulse point. “So what is it? What’s so important?”_

_“You. You are. I just gotta…” Bucky couldn’t quite get it out so he did the best he could which was fucking stupid. He leaned down and kissed Steve. He brought his other hand up to cup Steve’s cheek as he kissed him slowly, but dripping with every bit of love he felt. Steve didn’t seem like he minded. He was kissing him back, a little unsurely, but definitely kissing him back. Bucky wasn’t sure if Steve was more asleep than he thought he was or if things were going to get violent when Bucky didn’t have Steve essentially pinned to the cot, but when he pulled back, Steve just looked at him all dopey and doe-eyed._

_“Unusual,” he said. What a fucking dork._

_“I love you, Steve. God, I fucking love you. I’ll die if I never got to tell you that and I can’t promise either of us will be here tomorrow so I had to tell you. I’m in love with you.”_

_Steve bit down on his lip so hard that the exact moment it went far enough to draw blood, Bucky was stumbling onto his feet and running into the woods so fast that he felt like he was flying._

 

“Was that the hunger?”

Bucky wished he could’ve said it wasn’t but Steve was right. “It was the hunger but not in the way that you think.” He hated the way Steve’s shoulders bunched up again, trying to seem smaller than he was. “I meant it, Steve. I absolutely love you. And I won’t stop even if you tell me to. You and me were… I’ve never felt that with anyone in my life and I won’t feel it ever again. It was only the hunger that made me tell you because I thought it would keep you away from me. I thought you would want to push me as far away as you could. But it didn’t. Mostly because you’re a stupid punk but I’m hoping mostly because you love me too.”

Steve’s face twisted up in something strange. “But I’m wrong, Bucky. There’s something that isn’t right with me and I can’t… feel attraction the way most do. I don’t feel like I want to have sex with anyone even when I love them. I won’t make you happy, Bucky. I just won’t.”

All of that. Everything they’d gone through. Everything they had seen together and separately. Red Skull, Zola in a computer, Hitler being ridiculously nice compared to the rest of them, aliens, Tony Stark in general, the fact that Bucky was a literal fucking vampire, and the fact that Steve didn’t want to have sex was what was bothering him the most? 

What.

A.

Fucking.

Dork.

That brought a laugh out of Bucky like he never laughed before. “Listen to me. I haven’t had sex with anyone since before I turned and I had only had sex twice before that. I love you, Steve. I’ve loved you since you saved my life in Azzano and I’ll love you until the world burns. But you and me seem to be the only people on this planet that are going to live long enough to see the sun eat us up so if you think a thing like sex is going to keep me from wanting to be with you, you’re stupider than Dum Dum after a fifth.”

And that’s all that took. Stupid Steve and his stupid good nose sniffing out the vampire in him. It seemed dumb to say they lived happily ever after because that sure as hell wasn’t a fairy tale. Not at all. But they did. They made up a better story for why Bucky was alive so they wouldn’t have to hide from the media and Bucky wouldn’t have to tell the world about vampires. And they did just live happily ever after. They were perfectly content just holding hands and kissing and being practically married. But it wasn’t until they came out as a couple, years down the road that they found out there was a name for what they were besides queer as a three dollar bill. Asexual. It seemed like such a strange concept to know they weren’t freaks. Sex was always considered so normal but now the lack of caring about sex was also normal.

Peggy was ordained of course so they went to her first long before they were ready because she was getting frail and she was slipping more and if there was one thing she would want on one of her last good days it would've been that. Thankfully, she was having a good day and she married them right in the room of her nursing home. You couldn't be legally married by someone who wasn't considered always in their right mind, so they did it again when they felt it was time to truly, honestly get married at the courthouse with all of the Avengers and Darcy and Bucky's lovely neighbor who baked them the loveliest plum cake they'd ever had and dressed it up all nice and white for their wedding day. They spent most of their time catching up on the world. Bucky loved learning and Steve had missed so much. It took them a long time, but eventually, Steve felt caught up enough to just live his life.

And that's exactly what they did. They lived their lives day to day, loving each other every second of the way and Bucky never again wished he was dead. Not even for a moment.

Steve and Bucky were just about the most normal couple the twenty-first century had ever seen. And they will continue to be even into the twenty-second and twenty-third and so on and so forth for the rest of forever. Just normal people doing their normal things. 


End file.
